Haiti Quake: Being There for the Big Story Has Its Price

Post-Katrina Pattern of Personal Reporting the Order of the Day. NPR's Jason Beaubien Offers a Textbook Example

No doubt, when a big story breaks most journalists want to be where the action is, even if they never leave the newsroom. Resources, experience, maybe even a little chutzpah, often determine who hits the road.
So, you have your cadre of reporters who show up in war zones and natural disasters. They want to be there, not because they're paid to, but because that's where the story is, where what their work can be a game-changer, misery and reward worked into one.
Yet, it is the Haiti quake that has been a game-changer for some, who have seen some of the worst that fellow man and Mother Nature can dish out. This one is different.
That was evident yesterday in a report on All Things Considered, when NPR's Jason Beaubien was doing a Q&A with anchor Melissa Block outside a hotel, talking about a badly wounded girl bandaged but otherwise lying untended. As he looked at her and described her condition, Beaubien began to cry.

"She keeps lifiting her head and her lips are shaking .... Sorry, Melissa," he said amid tears.
"That's OK," she quietly replied."
"It's heartbreaking, what is happening here," Beaubien continued, quickly regaining composure. "There are people just in the streets everywhere."

This is no journo-tourist. Before becoming Mexico City bureau chief, Beaubien spent four years in Africa for NPR, reporting from 27 countries, where war, famine, and AIDS were a prominent part of his landscape. He's also been to Haiti before, covering the aftermath of hurricanes.
It was interesting that Beaubien was interviewed by Block, who filed report after gripping report from China, following the earthquake that devastated Sichuan province in 2008. She was a human being first, a reporter second. And that's how you get the story right, not to mention a shower of awards that came her away, along with co-anchor Robert Siegel and their team.

Beaubien's the father of two boys. When he gets home, there are bound to be lots of hugs.

It's hard to say who will need them more.

Evening Newscasts Not Dead Yet

Still, Don't Expect Metamucil and Depends to Stop Advertising Anytime Soon

From TV Newser comes good news for those who toil in and around the likes of Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, and Brian Williams.
Some 27 million people watched the network newscasts in the first week in January, with ABC/Sawyer putting up a good fight against NBC, though Brian Williams is still top dog by a good margin.
That's not to say those numbers will be as robust throughout the year, especially as the weather gets warmer. But still extremely decent by any measure.
A caveat: only 8 million or so of that number is linked to the 25-54 demo. So, the bulk of the audience is still older boomers and/or their elderly parents. And contrary to advertising myths, they still spend money, and not just on the prescription drugs that account for so many of the ads between 6:30-7.
The tough part will be finding new viewers as the old folks start aging out, something newspapers have failed miserably at. The nets have an advantage in that they don't charge for their product. The larger question remains how many will continue to need it. Short-term, that's not a worry for the news divisions. Twenty-seven million viewers have seen to that.

Now It's Being Called the Muff, Instead

Dam it, Canadian magazine The Beaver Changing Its Name

Canadian history magazine The Beaver was founded in 1920, back when a beaver was just, well, a beaver.

Ah, how times and dirty minds have changed.

Seems double entendres take their time making their way across the border, hence a belated name change of the magazine to, yawn, Canada's History.

Love this quote from editor Mark Reid:

"Market research showed us that younger Canadians and women were very very unlikely to ever buy a magazine called The Beaver no matter what it's about. For whatever reasons, they are turned off by the name."

It must have been a serious problem as Reid used "very" twice, which I take as the Canadian equivalent of Defcon 4 in the publishing business. The women part I can understand. Younger Canadians? Not so much. If anything they'd just be pissed off when they find out the magazine is about history and not, um, you know, wildlife.

A Delicate Marketing Dance: DNA Testing Goes Mainstream

So Where Do These Kits Go In the Drug Store, the Condom Aisle?

I stumbled upon an ad the other day for a swab-at-home DNA Paternity Test from a deftly named company called Identigene.

Apparently, it's the only over-the-counter test of its kind. As such, it's a little weird to see a product like this being touted in a magazine let alone on a store shelf. Then again, we don't think twice anymore about ads for condoms, douches or vaginal-itch cream.

Ads like these, for better or worse, have become a fact of life -- literally so, for Identigene.

In case you were wondering, the collection kit goes for $29.95. The test itself is another $119.

Sort of.

As the kit's website points out, there's a difference between this test and a legal test, in other words, one that would be admissible in court. The testing methodology is the same; the only is it involves an independent party who would verify identification and witness the collection. That'll run you another $250.

Interestingly, Identigene is playing to people who want both outcomes. On the home page is a link to the ABC show "Find My Family," a Kleenex-fest where long-lost family members are reunited, kids looking for birth parents, etc. Identigene provides the DNA testing for the show.

Next to that link is one for a New York Times magazine from November about men who find out through DNA testing that they weren't the father of their children after all, and how a negative paternity test isn't necessarily the end of the story.

Either way, Identigene is there to help -- for $149-$399, of course.

New York Post Gives Us The Sizzle and Steak on Plane Bomber

And the winner of front page of the day is.....

Of course, it's easy to have a laugh now, but.....

Decision by Wall Street Journal to Cancel Wine Column Leaves a Bad Taste

Departure of Dorothy Gaiter and husband John Brecher Leaves Big Hole in Journal's Lifestyle Coverage

The Wall Street Journal wine column from husband-and-wife team extraordinaire Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher was destination reading for me every weekend in the Wall Street Journal.

As I became more interested in wine, I always looked to them to help become more educated about vintages and varietals, a massive undertaking that Dottie and John pulled off impeccably. Obviously, they knew a lot more about wine than you or me, but were never uppity about their expertise. Their knowledge was easily imparted, freely shared.

So, it was with more than a measure of sadness that they mentioned, almost in passing in Saturday's column, that it was their last one. No explanation, but as the Vinography blog adeptly notes, most likely an economic one.

Until now, I had appreciated the Journal's decision to keep the wine column humming, as I noted in a posting last year. After all, the paper had to pay two salaries as well as the tab for the dozens of bottles of wines sampled for each column. But the couple showed they were worth it.

Dottie and John were nothing if not thorough. Maybe too thorough for Murdoch's beancounters.

What made their column truly great was how their passion for wine was intertwined with their love for each other. Discovering wine and telling us about their great finds was a grand adventure for them that we were privileged to be a part of.

Their column and family life often intersected -- a trip to Disney World with their daughters also included sitting at the chef's table and drinking expensive wines at the resort's top restaurant -- meant readers felt like we knew them as well. That's why I'm referring to them by their first names, just like they did in the columns.

Whether it was a $6 bottle of Vinho Verde or a $1,500 Chateau Latour, they showed us how drinking wine can at once be a deeply personal, fun, and wholly subjective experience. Their "yuck" could have been your "delicious," or vice versa, and that was perfectly fine.

Dottie and John often got some of their biggest responses for the annual "Open That Bottle Night," which occurred at the end of February, and encouraged people to uncork some wine that had a special meaning or significance. This communal gathering celebrated wine for wine's sake, not to glorify oenophilic snobbery.

That's something you can't take for granted nowadays in wine journalism. All the more reason to hope that Dottie and John land elsewhere. I'll drink to that.

No Business Like Snow Business on New York TV

Nothing Like a Blizzard to Get the Competitive Juices Flowing, But....

From my perch in Westchester County, the first big snow in the New York area was so-so.
We got a mere eight inches, compared to the rest of the family blitzed by at least 21 inches on Long Island, where Newsday captured this picture. Other areas got more. In other words, the kind of story that keeps people glued to their TVs. Nothing like having reporters do live shots in a blinding storm to tell you it's snowing so you don't have to find out for yourself.
Not surprisingly, the stations trotted out a lot of their first-string anchors and weather guys. Chuck Scarborough is usually anywhere but a studio on a Saturday night, but there he was on WNBC-TV with Melissa Russo, while regular weekend co-anchor DeMarco Morgan was booted outside to do stand-ups from Times Square. Talk about being big-footed.
WNBC has slashed and burned its staff, and shed many a veteran reporter as it cut costs concurrently with its plunging ratings. But it was relatively game last night. While I didn't see it because I have DirectTV, the station had a continuous storm broadcast on one of its digital side channels anchored by David Ushery.
From what I can gather it was solid, public-service journalism, more akin to what you'd get from an all-news radio station. But what WNBC really should have done was put that broadcast on the main channel. It's not like there was a compelling need to run WWE wrestling when the area was being bodyslammed by the snow.
I didn't find out until almost after the fact but WNYW/Fox 5 trotted out Ernie Anastos and Rosanna Scotto for a 9 a.m. broadcast this Sunday. It may have been lightly attended given the station normally is running religious programming in that slot, so if you weren't watching the 10 p.m. news the night before, you were likely somewhere else. Like WABC/Channel 7, the usual clock cleaner in New York when it comes to news ratings and staff.
The station had the equivalent of a weekday complement of reporters in the field, with at least eight checking in for live spots, with two weather anchors, including weekday mainstay Lee Goldberg pulling duty Saturday and Sunday.
The coverage was solid, workmanlike fare if somewhat limited by the predictable nature of the story itself. But they made the most of what they had. The only one who came up short was weekend weather anchor Heidi Jones, who was dispatched to the LIRR station in Mineola to report on the myriad delays on that system.
Only problem: Jones really didn't know what she was talking about. First, she kept talking about suspensions of service at places like Far Rockaway, Long Beach and West Hempstead. True, but those are also the names of branches on the line, which meant about 20 stations had no service. She repeatedly showed she didn't know the difference and nobody bothered to correct her.
Ditto for when she kept talking in the present tense about a train that broke down overnight, and how passengers were still stuck on the train when Newsday.com reported the train had been towed to a station and passengers were placed on another train.
That's when producers come into the picture. If a reporter is stuck doing stand-ups, somebody actually has to be making calls to ensure the information is correct and current. It was a rare misstep for a news operation that otherwise sets the table for how TV news is covered -- or not -- in this market.
P.S. Memo to the staff at NBC New York.com, the website for channel 4: this picture was taken in Maryland, not New York. Thought you might want to know.

Fairies Sprinkling Dust at Wall Street Journal

Must Be Something in the Air on Sixth Avenue

More than one person was grasping for the same , ethereal analogy in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
On Page B5 in a story about The Limited's success with its Bath & Body Works division, Limited big cheese Leslie Wexner is quoted as saying the results are not "just fairy dust."
Then on Page B6, a story about Peter Ligouri being hired by Discovery Communications to be its COO quotes him as saying "The biggest challenge is having the magical fairy dust."
Because, after all, you don't want the unmagical fairy dust.

A Cynical Yet Pragmatic Move by Tribune and Scripps-Howard

Companies Hope Non-Subscriber Turkeys Will Pay to Gobble Up Circulars and Coupons

From the why-didn't-someone-think-of-this-sooner file comes this item from Bloomberg, reporting that Scripps and Tribune will jack up the newsstand prices for their papers tomorrow to squeeze a few more coins out of casual readers grabbing the papers for the Black Friday sales ads.
And we're not talking just another quarter or so. In some cases, papers are charging the Sunday price or even more.
“It’s a once-in-a-year sort of event for us,” said Mark Contreras, senior vice president of newspapers for E.W. Scripps, publisher of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, told Bloomberg. “The Thanksgiving paper in every place we offer it is the biggest newspaper of the year.”
Scripps and Tribune aren't alone. The Washington Post and the Kansas City Star are also boosting prices.
Contreras said the largest Commercial-Appeal of the year comes out on Thansgiving, when circulation more than doubles to 195,000. "Frankly, I don't know why you wouldn't charge more," he added.
Neither do I. But let's keep it in context. That big paper Contreras is so pleased about will largely come from preprinted ad inserts. In other words, they cost the paper nothing to print, only to distribute. So, profits from higher newsstand prices can be considerable.
But don't think for a moment that more ads mean more articles. Similar to the Detroit Lions' chances of winning tomorrow, its not going to happen.
One MediaNews executive is quoted as saying the Thanksgiving papers offer "real value" because shoppers can ostensibly see all of the best sales in one place.
Let's be clear: the real value is to the publishers, who need to do anything and everything they can to prop up revenues. It also might be the only way they can say happy Thanksgiving with a straight face.

Marcus Brauchli Puts Happy Face on Closing of Washington Post Bureaus

Convinces No One But Himself That Coverage Will Be Undiminished

Not a big surprise, given the state of affairs in the newspaper business, but still regrettable, is word from The Washington Post that it will shutter its last three national bureaus. The remaining reporters in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York will get a chance to work back at the mother ship, but their assistants are out of a job.
You don't need one hand to count the number of papers with a sizable bureau presence outside of Washington. In fact, you can stop after The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. Everyone else has pretty much closed up shop and relied on those papers and the A.P. to do the dirty work.
We get it. It's the new paradigm. Unfortunately, Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli doesn't get it, or if he does, isn't letting on. He's quoted in the NY Times saying the Post's "commitment to national news of interest to our readers is undiminished."
All well and good. Only problem: the Post will be doing most of its committing the same way most of the 1,400 remaining papers do: using the A.P. Sure, they can parachute in when something big's going down, and no doubt they will. Then again, the Post's newspaper division lost $166.3 million in the first three quarters this year. So, maybe not.
But there's nothing quite like being there, especially in New York. Now the Post will have to figure out whether to send a reporter to a story outside of D.C. by reading about it somewhere else. At least the Post still has a dozen or so foreign bureaus.
For now.

New York Times Turns In Wrong Direction to Take a Look at Effects of Recession

And the Main Subject of the A-1 Article by Michael Luo Agrees; When a Comments Section Actually Serves a Useful Purpose

The above-the-fold piece on the front of today's New York Times has a compelling headline: Job Woes Exacting a Heavy Toll on Family Life .
The copy editors did their job. But it appears everyone else involved with the story did not.
The piece by Michael Luo rests on the notion that the "greatest damage inflicted by this recession has not necessarily been financial, but emotional and psychological."
All well and good, except for the fact that Luo goes off the tracks when he focuses on a surburban Dallas man named Paul Bachmuth and his family. Luo adequately chronicles the trials and tribulations the family has experienced since he was laid off in December from a $120,000-a-year job as an energy consultant, including therapy and more than a few arguments and fights.
But the portrait is woefully incomplete, as evidenced by a photo cutline that says, in part: "Mr. Bachmuth ... at a job fair; he got a job offer last week."
Good for him. But why isn't that mentioned in the story? Is he going to take the job? Will the stress and pain that his layoff engendered now go away? Might there actually be a happy ending albeit one woefully inconvenient for the premise of the story?
We don't know, and maybe never will. The article enigmatically ends with a vignette about one of the daughters:

At night, she said, she has taken to stowing her worries away in an imaginary box.
“I take all the stress and bad things that happen over the day, and I lock them in a box,” she said.
Then, she tries to sleep.

If the Times could update the story in a cutline, it's inexplicable that it wouldn't update the story itself -- one that could have changed the story and most likely improved it. Someone else not impressed by how Luo handled the subject is none other than Paul Bachmuth, who in the online comments for the article gave some hint about how he was put through the sausage factory of newsgathering.

Michael Luo sent in an e-mail to a job networking group that I belong to. That is how he found me for this story. I had read a number of Mr. Luo’s articles on the recession and its impacts, and was very happy that someone out there was reporting on this important issue. I agreed to be the subject of this story in the hope that it might help others. However, I conveyed to Mr. Luo many times that I did NOT want the story to portray me and my family as “victims”. We are not. The last thing in the world I want is for people to “feel sorry for me.”

Given that Luo reveals how despite the fact Bachmuth's wife took a part-time job, but did little to help out around the house while idled that's unlikely. But I see his point.
It's a danger when the media tries to report on trends, or perceives a trend and tries to create one. There are no hard numbers on how widespread this problem is, and it might not be one, certainly in relation to the stresses that layoffs otherwise bring on.
No doubt, finding people to go on record to talk about something so difficult is not easy, and I have no doubt Luo labored to find the right subjects. But the Bachmuths weren't them. And the way the article ends it's almost as if Luo got up and left when a bell rang in the newsroom. Shift over. Narrative be damned.
In other words, we didn't get the whole story. When you charge at least $2 for a copy of the paper, it's not too much to ask for, especially when many people out of work can't afford that in the first place.

Time to Bargain for More of David Segal's "The Haggler" Column in New York Times

The "Action Line" Column Moves into the 21st Century

Among my destination reads on Sundays -- at least when it's in the paper -- is "The Haggler" column by David Segal in the business section of The New York Times.
Ostensibly, the column is a distant cousin of those "Action Line" and "On Your Side" columns of yore, where readers would write in seeking help when a utility company screwed them over, or the TV repairman ripped them off.
Segal performs that service, in a way, but uses the space to showcase his witty, gifted writing in the process. Sure, he takes his mission seriously, but too much so. And he merrily skewers the screw-ups who have wronged those who've written for help.
It's a fun read. Too bad, it only appears every two weeks. That's because Segal's real job is to write longform features for the Sunday business section, which are off the beaten path from the usual fare.
Times editors have given him the license to write with a little more abandon, almost as if he's writing for a magazine. Indeed, these are the kinds of pieces that would fit in nicely in a place like Fortune or the late, lamented Portfolio.
At times he'll use the first person or the "this reporter" to show he's a little further invested in the story and its outcome. It might not be how they normally do it at the Gray Lady, but it keeps you reading, no small feat when confronted with 2,500-3,000 words on a Sunday when you have football, kids and laundry to otherwise distract you.
At times, Segal stretches a little too far, as he did in an otherwise-admirable Sept. 27 piece that focused on how the recession hit close to home in Columbus, Nebraska when a wind-tower plant had layoffs.

You can see management’s unfettered hand in the vaguely Dickensian hours that many here work, and you sense an emphasis on unfettered growth in the just-build-it ethos that governs the stretch of strip malls on the road that bisects the town. It’s fast food, a Wal-Mart, a J. C. Penney, check-cashing outlets and dozens of other stores. The traffic to this generic stretch has come at the apparent expense of a fading but picturesque downtown — a Hopper-esque setting, with a railroad station, some gorgeous early 20th century buildings and a former opera house that is now a minimall.

What does vaguely Dickensian mean, exactly? Segal mentions unions are a non-entity in Nebraska because wages have been pretty good, but Dickensian implies those workers made some kind of Faustian bargain to get that money. If they work more than 40 hours on the floor, they're getting O.T. Nothing Dickensian about that.
Still in all, a great read, and it's does an ink-stained wretch's heart good to see the Times recognizes Segal's talent and lets it run rather than tamp it down because "that's the way we do things around here."
Now if we could just get a few more Haggler columns......

Let's Hope Windows 7 Works Better Than Microsoft's Copyrwriters

Bad Grammar Shouldn't Overshadow Good Product

In a few days, I should have my brand spanking new copy of Windows 7, the OS that's giving Microsoft some long-lost love in the media.
I'm excited, not just because I'm swallowing the hype hook, line and sinker, but because it means good riddance to Vista, which has been the bane of my laptop's existence.
So, it's only proper that Microsoft has given Windows 7 a nice and proper, even peppy ad campaign on multiple platforms, with people claiming credit for claiming all the gee-whiz stuff in Windows 7 was their idea -- like this spot.



The spots work, just like Windows 7.
So it was more than a bit jarring to walk past in Grand Central Terminal a Windows 7 billboard that says "I told them it should require less steps. Now it requires less steps."
Less? Less?
Did they listen to you when you were speaking? And nobody corrected you and told you it was "fewer steps?"
Eeeew.
This is not quite on the level of "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should." English teachers cringed whenever they heard "like," rather than "as."
But Microsoft is a company that is nothing if not fastidious. Having worked with its PR agency in a previous life, I know words matter to the company.
So should a good editor.
They could use one in a hurry.

At Least Scalia Gets The Language Right

Acid-Tongued Righty Not "Gruntled" About "Choate"

When it comes to judicial philosophy and, well, probably just about anything else, I'm not in sync with Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, the righty power hitter on the Supreme Court bench.
But Scalia's a lover of words, as he makes abundantly clear in many of his tart, acerbic and always-considered opinions. You may not agree with what he writes, but you'll never be bored reading him.
But as the AP's Mark Sherman reports, Scalia decided a language lesson was in order from the bench. His antenna went up when an unwitting attorney said "choate," as an ostensible opposite of "inchoate." Scalia cried foul.
"There is no such adjective. I know we have used it, but there is no such adjective as 'choate.' There is 'inchoate,' but the opposite of 'inchoate' is not 'choate,'" Scalia said
Point taken. The attorney was ready to move on. Scalia was not.
"Any more than the, I don't know," Scalia said. "Exactly. Yes. It's like 'gruntled,'" he said.
The lawyer tried to continue: "But I think I am right on the law, Your Honor."
But Scalia wasn't focusing on the law. He was going to finish his English lesson. "Exactly. 'Disgruntled,'" he said, adding that some people mistakenly assume that "the opposite of 'disgruntled" is 'gruntled.'"
Such are the exchanges that cause lawyers to start drinking heavily after a morning at the Court.

TV Breast Exams Straddling Line Between Good Idea and Ratings Ploy

Why Do This When Exams Play A "Small Role" in Detecting Cancer

Of course, any weapon to fight breast cancer is both welcome and needed. And WJLA-TV in Washington is running with the notion in a big way.
As part of a four-part series on the disease, it will show on their newscasts today two women fully exposed as they do a breast self-examination. No drapes or tasteful concealments. This will be a frontal assault on a long-time taboo.
On the one hand, you can argue that providing women with as much information as they can to head off a killer disease while it could still be treatable is only a good thing. And this is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so you do have that tenuous synergy.
Then again, even the American Cancer Society is ambivalent about breast self-exams. The Washington Post notes the Society says "self-exams play only "a small role" in finding breast cancer. On its Web site, the society says 'it's okay not to do [a self examination] or not to do it on a fixed schedule.'"
Not only that, the society had no comment about the WJLA series. In other words, the bandwagon passed by and they conveniently forgot to jump.
Given that, you could view -- should you choose to view this -- more as a ratings ploy than a good idea. WJLA, though, gets to hide behind the cloak of performing a valuable public service, and tow the "If we could save just one life with these reports" line and not look opportunistic.
It's actually a rather ingenious maneuver. Whether it actually has any impact is another matter.

Fighting the Good Fight With Jay Gallagher

As Gannett's Albany Bureau Chief Battles Pancreatic Cancer, He Offers a Profile in Courage -- and Good Humor

I first met Jay Gallagher when I was a cub reporter for UPI in Albany, and he was the bureau chief for Gannett News Service. We both did time on the Legislative Correspondents Association softball team, and though I didn't know him well, he was always friendly and did a great job of keeping the follies that masqueraded as state government in perspective.

Later, we'd work a little more closely when I made a few trips a year to the capital as the state reporter for Gannett's Rockland Journal-News.

I haven't seen him in 20 years, but kept seeing his work, which wasalways solid, more-than-workmanlike.

I hadn't recalled seeing his byline recently, so when I had occasion to speak to a colleague in his office, I was floored by the news that Jay was diagnosed in June with pancreatic cancer. Apart from Osama bin Laden, it's the kind of news you never want to hear about anybody, let alone a former colleague, a good guy and great family man.

But as I have found out, Jay is someone disinclined to throw himself a pity party. Instead, he's devoted himself to beating considerable odds and, at least some of the time, blogging. It's good reading, and if it gets you to send a check to The Lustgarten Foundation, which is devoted to pancreatic cancer research, so much the better.

Like I did, you can give some money to the cause. And you can also send Jay some good thoughts and a spare prayer or three. Maybe those can help too.

Maybe We Should Give David Hunke the Nobel Prize in Economics

USA Today Publisher Has His Crystal Ball Working Overtime

So USA Today, that erstwhile companion outside your hotel-room door -- indeed, it was waiting for me this morning at the Hilton Garden Inn in Riverhead, N.Y. -- will be chastened when the newest FAS-FAX numbers will show its circulation plunged 17 percent.
In other words, it's behaving like just about every other American newspaper, er, newspaper in the USA.
But USA Today publisher David Hunke, in the glass-is-half-full style that was once the hallmark of the paper, told his troops: fear not.

Before this year, our largest circulation declines came after the attacks of September 11th in 2001. And when the travel industry rebounded in the months that followed, USA TODAY did, too. We fully expect to see circulation increases again as the economy recovers. I'm encouraged by the fact that despite the tough travel economy, we have not lost a single hotel relationship during this recession.

I realize it's Hunke's job to say such things. Nonetheless, let's get real. Even if the economy rebounds, I suspect that hotels will take a closer look at just how many copies are being ordered. Instead of blithely dropping them in front of every occupied room, you will see a greater trend toward having them in the lobby, where people can grab them to pore over breakfast or on the way out the door.
Second, Hunke may be confusing crowded planes with increased business travel, his bread and butter. Planes are more crowded only because there are fewer of them. There are still plenty of rooms to be had at hotels.
Finally, Hunke has a more-aggressive rival for the hearts and minds of travelers: The Wall Street Journal. It makes a big deal of telling guests at Marriott properties they can choose the Journal as the paper they get in the morning.
In other words, while it's reasonable to expect USA Today can get back some of the 400,000 copies it no longer has to print. And it sure is swell that they can be found in 22,000 hotels. But there's a new paradigm out there, for the hotel business as well as the newspaper business. They both suffer from the same malady: there just aren't as many people who want or need their product as there used to be. And that's not likely to change anytime soon, if ever.

New York Times Pay Strategy Shouldn't Rest on Backs of Subscribers

Let the Freeloaders Ante Up; Leave the Rest of Us Alone


The New York Times has most of us over a barrel. It knows that for most readers it's a hard habit to break, despite the miscues, cutbacks, and price hikes.
If you pick up the Times every day at the newsstand, that means you're currently shelling out $884 a year for the privilege. It's less if you subscribe, but you're still in for $500 or more, depending on where you live. So, as word comes that the Times could be, possibly, may be moving closer toward a consensus on a pay model for nytimes.com, let's hope loyalty counts for something.
That means not charging subscribers, in other words your most loyal customers, for the privilege of checking articles online or going back into the archives. We already pay enough, far more than subscribers for any other paper. As an example, new subscribers of The Washington Post can sign on for $1.50 a week for 26 weeks. That's less than the $2 newsstand price for the Times -- for one day.
Those of you who would bring up the Wall Street Journal, and its separate charge for the online version should consider this: unlike the Times, the Journal has been aggressive with subscription discounts, as low as $99 a year with online access included. At that price, it's a no-brainer to subscribe. Tacking a charge onto nytimes.com for subscribers: not such a no-brainer.
True, it is the straw that stirs the drink for other newspaper sites. But if you already get the paper it's not so chock full of unique content that it's a must-buy. It's good for emailing articles to other people or catching up on a column you didn't get to read on the train. Nytimes.com looks great, it reads nicely, but it's not necessarily a necessity.
That's not the case if you don't get the dead-tree version, and those freeloading folks are the ones who should cough up some dough to keep the Sulzbergers and their bankers happy.
I've done my part.

William Safire Not Resting In Peace?

Fallen Language Guru's Illness Obscured by Lack of Truthiness in NYT Magazine

No doubt, the brass at The New York Times knew William Safire's time was limited -- as it sadly is for just about anyone diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
That he solidered on in his last weeks still producing On Language columns as late as Sept. 19 (though it's not known when he actually wrote them) is a tribute to his fortitude and determination.
Regardless of whether you shared his world view -- and I usually didn't -- you know that as a man who loved words, he'd insist on the right ones.
So, was it disingenuous, sloppy, or just plain wishful thinking, when Sunday's On Language column, written by Ben Zimmer, had a note at the bottom that Safire "is on hiatus for a few weeks." This, on the day he died.
True, the magazine goes to press early in the week. But a hiatus? C'mon. You can just feel Safire itching to get out a red pencil and strike that sucker. Nothing wrong with telling the truth artfully.
"William Safire is off this week." After all, he was.

Nick Jr. Throws Parents for A Scare

Noggin Gone, But No Big Whoop, as It Turns Out

We were thrown for a loop last night as we fired up the wide-screen for the 4-year-old denizen of the condo so he could get cranking on his TV day before the parents pull free from the pillows.

So, imagine the horror when Noggin had disappeared, to be replaced by Nick Jr.

The shows looked the same, but the name had changed. For me, that was cause for concern. The Nick Jr. brand had been used for the block of shows for pre-schoolers on during the day on Nickelodeon. The problem: the shows are lousy with commercials. Noggin is spot-free.

But we can all rest easy. As stated on a well-buried FAQs page:

Nickelodeon has been the trusted brand behind NOGGIN since its inception. The channel's former brand name was actually Nick Jr.'s NOGGIN. We're making this name change to strengthen the existing connection between Nickelodeon, our educational mission, and our preschool offerings on-air and online.

OK, then. And, yes, no commercials. I can rest easy. And my son can watch Blue's Clues without being bombarded by toy commercials. A win-win.